


patron saint of imperfection

by typervoxilations



Series: draw a monster (why is it a monster?) [1]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Deity!Corvo, M/M, mostly kind of Outsider's third person POV, not really a slash thing but just something I had to get out of my system, relationship if you squint probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-08-17 05:03:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8131420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/typervoxilations/pseuds/typervoxilations
Summary: What is a god to a non-believer?(What is a non-believer who becomes a god?)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rethira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rethira/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Rat King](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8104327) by [Rethira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rethira/pseuds/Rethira). 



> Title comes from a Tarantino thing, but I can’t remember exactly what. Something about monsters though, and that was good enough of a theme for this fic. I love me some deity!Corvo. Inspired by Rethira, who 110% knows how to write the perfect Corvo/Outsider dynamic, and the [kink meme thread](https://dishonored-kinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/446.html?thread=483006) which prompted the work this one was inspired from.

The first shrine that is built goes unnoticed by everything except dark eyes always watching from the Void.

 

It is wholly unimpressive, cobbled together out of desperation and in fear - _must be a god of death_ , they must have thought, shuddering while praying, offering sacrifices of broken rat’s teeth and rust scented ash, plumage plucked for crude shafts of crossbow bolts and hollowed out bullets filled with whale oil - but then again, it is only the first. The Outsider knows it will be but one of many more in the horrible glimpses of all time and space, and mortals, when afforded the time and choice to spend the effort, possess the ability to do better, _be_ better.

 

( There is a reason there are humans bearing his mark. There is reason he continues to name his Chosen even after so many have let him down - Vera, Daud, Delilah. There is a reason Corvo is his favorite in a long time, a reason he hopes Emily will not disappoint. )

 

It is draped in black, alight with blue, livid but not yet buzzing with the Void-hum that comes from thousands of years of belief, this fledgling faith, and he thinks of the way human skin blooms with color from traumatized capillaries, healthy hues of heat bleeding away to a pale-toned chill - _palor mortis, algor mortis, rigor mortis, livor mortis_.

 

In the misery between plague and politics, he is not surprised humans would turn to anything for just one more day.

 

( Someone had once thanked him once before, black mark a stark contrast on his bloodless hand, red carving tracks down sallow cheeks and boyish chin, for giving him the chance to spend the last days of his life without fear. He had been almost sad to see that little boy go - if only for the fact that it was many years more before someone interested him enough to make the human world less monochromatic, and more worth the effort. )

 

Somehow, the murmurs of fear become reverence, but true faith started when the less fortunate began to realize their muttered complaints, their terrified pleas in the dark.

 

( A cruel High Overseer branded as heretic, twin owners of slave mines who become slaves themselves, a Lord Regent who had brought the plague and murdered their Empress denounced and imprisoned - a kind girl who became a wise woman who inherited the throne and a golden age lasting decades. )

 

How did it begin?

 

A whisper and a man in a mask.

 

But was he ever a man?

 

No one ever saw but mere glimpses and yet.

 

( _Shout, and they will call it noise. Whisper, and they will strain to hear._ )

 

They wear crudely welded masks in his honor and at this, the Outsider _does_ laugh.

 

One shrine becomes two, becomes ten, becomes hundreds and now Dunwall has this: steel and driftwood tucked in dark basements and hidden alcoves, polished rat’s teeth and iridescent river krust pearls on one and carved whalebone on the other, whole crossbow bolts and whale oil lanterns that throw them into sharp relief, Void-blue and bruise-purple; one weighed down with heavy scented ash in pewter incense bowls and the other weightless with the music of nameless things in the vast unknown. 

 

It is… somewhat selfish on his part, when he nudges things in a certain direction; hears things prayed fervently that he subtly influences under the guise of a god who has yet to truly exist. All that power and no vessel.

 

But not for long.

 

Not for long at all.

 

The man was mortal.

 

The _idea_ was not.

 

He is curious as to how it will go and-

 

( Oh, was it laughable irony when the first prayers to the _Protector_ begin to echo among broken stone platforms and frozen leviathans, but the power knows who it _really_ belongs to. All things begin and end in the Void, and when it is his time, there is only fondness in the Outsider’s voice when he greets him again - _my dearest Corvo_. )

 

( And for thousands of years after, for the first time, when the people pray in whispers, he is not the only one who is listening anymore. )


End file.
